Kevin Phillips, author if one of my favorite books, Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street and the Frustration of American Politics, has a great column in the L.A. Times Opinion section today, on the dilemma faced by the Democrats. He says: “Greed Is Putting Party in Peril” (intrusive registration required, use ‘laexaminer’/’laexaminer’).

If the Democratic Party’s recent midterm election campaign was weak and shallow, the same can be said of its November post-midterm-election debate over whether to move left or right. Bluntly put, the party of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman has been selling its soul to fill its campaign wallet and is now in big trouble, especially among three key longtime constituencies: blacks, Latinos and lower-income Southern whites.
This, in turn, has become a threat to the balance of power in Washington and to the policymaking process. The “opposition” party is verging on incapacity. Its old faces are beyond Botox or relevant speech therapy. Few new ones are in sight.
Not that forthright ideology is the cure — moving leftward under Nancy Pelosi, the new Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, or rightward under the aegis of the Washington-based Democratic Leadership Council. However, there is some basic philosophy involved, and if the Democrats cannot comprehend this, they face considerable peril.
…
The weakening economy and skewed wealth distribution were obvious rallying points, yet Democratic leaders, despite having the freedom that comes from being out of power nationally, abandoned them, save for cliches about protecting Social Security and providing prescription drugs.
While hardly new, this marked an escalation in the national party’s willingness to discard old beliefs and the interests of ordinary citizens in order to woo big-contributor money that has captured the center of U.S. politics — the new “venal center.”
It is a critical and depressing transformation. Fifty years ago, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. identified a “vital center” in American politics, crediting Democrats with building a new and constructive moderate coalition under Roosevelt and Truman. But they lost their dominance and vitality some 30 years ago. Then, over the last 10 years, especially under Bill Clinton during the money-culture days of the stock market bubble, the Democratic Party joined in making venality bipartisan.
This is a losing politics, because the dominance of venality automatically favors the Republicans. Innately on the side of money, many, if not most, Republicans are philosophically committed to upholding its principles and some of its excesses. By contrast, the worthy history of the Democratic Party, especially during its periods of dominance, has been to question those principles and to indict related excesses. When abuses mount and Democrats remain mute, they lose both constituency appeal and their historical raison d’etre.
Regaining this balance is not turning left, an implausible description for the great Democrats from Jefferson to Truman. What it has involved is correcting the excesses of plutophile conservatives from Alexander Hamilton through the 20th century and down to the present day. Under current circumstances, it would take years for any such correction to be leftish.
…
(A.L.: emphasis mine)

I couldn’t agree more.
Until the Democratic Party can wean itself from the golden teat of large donors (primarily from lawyers, labor, technology, and media), they will be transparently captive to their investors’ interests.
Having given away the social and cultural grounds that tied them to working Americans, they then gave away the economic ones, and wonder why they are left standing at the altar.
Doesn’t surprise me.
[Update: Calpundit disagrees (note that his permalinks are wonky right now, just look for “venality”), and says that “I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but it sure doesn’t seem to provide any concrete suggestions. I mean, the “old Jackson-FDR constituencies”? In the year 2002, just what is that supposed to mean?” Well, from my point of view the ties than bind the Dems to the “political investor” class are pretty clear and well-drawn; those ties put the party firmly on the side of capital, as opposed to labor, and mean that the folks with cash pretty much dominated both sides of the political discussion over the last fifteen years. That needs to be balanced, and no one is doing it right now (with the exception, in a fragmented and relatively unproiductive way, of the Greens).]

My referrer logs are showing a bunch of traffic via the old blogspot url (http://armedliberal.blogspot.com); if you go there you get a message redirecting you here (for some reason I can’t get a redirect script to consistently work there).
If you’re one of those people, would you comment below and tell me who referred you there?? I’ll go get them to change their link…
Thanks!!

I’ve been thinking about the whole “coast” “heartland” thing, as noted by Yglesias and others, and had a hard time finding a way into the issue until last night.
We were driving home from the movies, Tenacious G, Middle Guy and I (we saw 8 Mile again, because the two of them wanted to), and I was punching the buttons on the stereo in the Mighty Odyssey Minivan when a discussion broke out.
The top 3 buttons on the stereo are taken up by the three major stations that TG and MG listen to (I tend to listen to the CD’s in the changer because I hate commercials).
KCRW, the local NPR station; KZLA, the local corporate-owned country station; and KROQ, the local corporate-owned alternative rock station.
The voting politics are complex. I’m totally fickle. I’ll mostly turn things off; KCRW when it gets too sanctimonious or the World Music interludes become intolerable; KROQ when the grindcore songs come on; KZLA when really bad country-pop gets played. TG likes KCRW and KZLA. MG hates KZLA.
So when we got into the car, some awful Incubus song came on, and I punched KZLA, which was playing a current country hit called “The Good Stuff”. In case you don’t listen, here’s a typical lyric:

Not a soul around but the old bar keep,
Down at the end an’ looking half asleep.
An he walked up, an’ said : “What’ll it be?”
I said: “The good stuff.”
He didn’t reach around for the whiskey;
He didn’t pour me a beer.
His blue eyes kinda went misty,
He said: “You can’t find that here.
“‘Cos it’s the first long kiss on a second date.
“Momma’s all worried when you get home late.
“And droppin’ the ring in the spaghetti plate,
“‘Cos your hands are shakin’ so much.
“An’ it’s the way that she looks with the rice in her hair.
“Eatin’ burnt suppers the whole first year
“An’ askin’ for seconds to keep her from tearin’ up.
“Yeah, man, that’s the good stuff.”

And Middle Guy looked disgusted and asked me “Why the hell do you listen to that stuff, anyway? How can you like the Vines and this?” That answer’s another issue…
But what I told him was that I liked the sound of good country music, and then started talking about the changes in country since I’d started listening to it, and that today it was almost the last music about love, fidelity, loss and hope, and that I liked that.
And that one thing that I missed from rock was the hope and yearning that used to be a part of it back when I was Middle Guy’s age.
And, as these kind of talks tend to do, they got me thinking.
I’d been thinking a lot about the Great Cultural Divide…the whole red/blue thing, and I had a brief moment of clarity.
It’s all about country music.
Or, rather, it’s all about the worldview that country music encapsulates.
Here’s a counterpoint. My subscription to Harper’s hasn’t run out yet, although I won’t be renewing it in spite of the flood of imploring letters and postcards I’ve received from their subscription service, and in this month’s is a classic explanation of why (not available on the web):

‘Comfort Cult’
On the honest unlovliness of William Trevor’s world
By Francine Prose
…
If part of what we seek from art is solace and consolation, an interlude of distraction, a brief escape from our daily cares, even a glimpse of happiness – and who, in these disturbing times does not, or should not want all of that and more? – it is simple enough to understand why the products of what we might call Comfort Culture should dramatically outperform a writer like William Trevor in the marketplace of analgesic entertainment. The Lovely Bones is narrated from heaven by a fourteen-year-old girl who has been raped and brutally murdered by a neighbor (think Our Town with dismemberment) and who receives as compensation for her earthly travails, an afterlife that includes a nice apartment, plenty of teen-girl magazines, a paradisical version of high school, and a front-row seat from which to observe the folks back home coping with their grief and puzzling over her killer’s identity. No such comforts are provided the unfortunate young women dispatched by Hilditch, the creepy serial killer in Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey; indeed it is characteristic of Trevor’s bravery as a writer, and of his passionate sympathy for even the most loathsome outsiders and misfits, that a good part of the book is written from the point of view of the demented and delusional Hilditch himself.
…
(emphasis added)

First, I can’t help myself, but the idea of a literary critic with the name ‘Prose’ does give me the giggles…
…but to get back to culture; while I can see a sensitive reading of Felicity’s Journey and a sympathetic nod to the loathsome outsider as a steady part of the programming on KCRW, and a speed-metal version on KROQ (in fact the song probably already exists), there is no way that sympathy would be found on KZLA. No contemporary country song would celebrate that kind of brutality and despair. We’re talking about a fundamental difference of worldview and taste, and this issue ought to serve as a pathway into understanding the gap between the worlds.
In the next part, I’ll talk a bit about the social and economic realities behind the gap.
(added emphasis)

Bob Morris links me over to this article by Patrick Seale on the roots of terrorism.

One strong possibility is that the “enemy” is not just a terrorist network but a broad, militant, grassroots rebellion against American military and political interventions in the Arab and Muslim world, against Western arrogance, racism and bullying.
For decades now, but especially under the Bush administration, America’s triumphalism, its contempt for the views and interests of others, its boastful displays of military power, its refusal to recognize and address the “roots of terror,” its apparent indifference to international law, its economic supremacy all these have created a worldwide backlash which has put Americans at risk in many countries. History suggests that any power which dominates others will inevitably create violent opposition to it. If this is true, then what we are witnessing is nothing less than an anti-imperialist movement of the 21st century.
Although often expressed in Islamic terms, the movement of rebellion is essentially political. It aims to liberate the Arab and Muslim world from the suffocating embrace of the West and above all from American neo-imperialism and its Zionist handmaiden. Future historians might well judge Osama bin Laden, for example, not as the outrageous pariah he now seems, but as only the latest in a long line of Islamic activists who include such well-known figures of the past as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Hassan al-Banna, Said Qutb, Musa Sadr, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and even Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Many separate streams feed the river of rebellion. There is no doubt that the epidemic of anti-American sentiment raging from Morocco to Indonesia is fed by American support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. This is the main spring of the rebellion. But there are many others. Israel’s repeated aggressions against Lebanon, as well as its 22-year occupation of the South supported by the US have bred an army of bitter opponents. The 12-year sanctions against Iraq the worst inflicted on any country in history have mobilized opinion powerfully against America and Britain, as has the obsessive threat of war against Baghdad repeated almost every time Bush or Prime Minister Tony Blair open their mouths.
Quite apart from its irresponsibility, there is something incomprehensible and irrational about America’s fixation with Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. As the distinguished American columnist William Pfaff wrote the other day, “There is, to the best of specialist opinion, no scenario by which the American public is threatened by nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of Iraqi origin.” In other words, there is no credible Iraqi threat to the United States. Why then is America making more enemies for itself? Is it because hard-line Zionists, anxious to ensure Israel”s regional supremacy, have captured American foreign policy? The well-founded suspicion that this is the case is yet another source of anti-US rage.

Well, while I see the world pretty damn differently from this author, I do agree that the actors are part of a more diffuse set of organizations than we are assuming, and that simply decapitating these organizations will not make the problems go away.
He and I part company here: Where to place the responsibility for resolving these issues? While I think that the US and the West have to reach out, it’s equally clear to me that the other side…the Muslim and developing world’s responsible actors…need to reach out as well. Why?
Because if there is no one on the other end of the phone, we in the West will do what it takes to protect ourselves.
I commented earlier:

I don’t want to be a part of a society that eradicated another culture; I don’t want to commit genocide.
I don’t want to be put in a position where genocide is either a reasonable option, or where my fellow citizens are so enraged that they are willing to commit it, and my opposition will be washed away in a tide of rage.
I want a calm, prosperous Middle East, and believe that the Palestinian Arabs who have been royally screwed by everyone…by the Europeans and Americans who established Israel without planning or compensation; by their leaders who have led them into several suicidal wars; by the leaders of the other Arab states who use them as cheap labor, exploit them economically, and exploit them politically…deserve decent lives.
They won’t get them following the path they are on.

Neither will the ‘enraged’ Arabs, who will simply add to the world’s toll of sorrow until we get tired enough of paying it.
That’s a sad truth.

Looking at my blog notes (I keep a Word file with notes on various things I read or think about that are potentially bloggable) I have a serious backlog of topics to bog about. Most of them, sadly are pretty serious and will take some thought and research which will take time, which is, of course, in seriously short supply right now.
In the queue:
Racism and racialism in the 21st century
Privacy and community
Equality and fairness
The heartland vs. the coasts
Policing the modern city
Some thoughts on the nature of property.
But I wanted to comment on and help publicize in some small way something I saw on Bill Quicks’ blog.

Cobb County and Marietta police arrested a surgeon in the emergency room of WellStar Kennestone hospital, resulting in the death of 16-year-old soccer player, according to a lawsuit filed last week.
Brad Dalton of Marietta died Sept. 30, 2001, from a brain injury he received while playing soccer. He was rushed to the hospital where neurosurgeon Dr. Daniel Moore was paged to report to the hospital for emergency surgery.
The doctor never made it to the operating table because police chose to arrest him in the emergency room on charges he fled a parking lot fender-bender, the lawsuit states.

If you want to understand why it is that we’re suspicious of TIA and other efforts by our government to protect us, it’s exactly because of events like this.
First, if it my kid, I wouldn’t be suing…I’d be in restraints somewhere after getting medieval on more than a few people’s asses.
But in a world where common sense doesn’t get issued along with a badge and a gun, maybe we ought to be thinking more about how to get some common sense down into the ranks along with all the sophisticated computer equipment.

Enjoy your family and friends. If you can, do something for those who have less than you, and spare a thought as you sit down to your meal for all those who helped create and defend the bounty we will all enjoy today.
I’m dropping some turkeys off at the local homeless kitchen and heading to my brother’s for dinner.
Shut off the damn computer!! Yeah, you!!
*grin*
catch you all tomorrow…

Dear Chuck Pelto:
You’re a troll.
I’ve banned and killfiled you, and as soon as I can get logged into the server, I’ll ban your whole subdomain.
Please go play with yourself somewhere else.
Buh-bye.
Your host.
(if sufficent non-Chuck folks want, I’m happy to repost our whole sad correspondance)

Michele, over at A Small Victory has a triff post on ‘Blame America’, inspired by the recent murder of Dave Mobilio, a Red Bluff police officer, and the postings (on Indymedia and elsewhere) by someone who claims to be his murderer. Unlike the South Park song, it’s serious and has consequences.

In other words, don’t blame the shooter, blame the man. The man was holding him down and caused him to shoot. The man was repressing him and stealing his air and killing his babies and diminishing his rights.
And if it isn’t enough to just place the blame on corporations and laws that were obviously driving this person insane, you can always turn to the old conspiracy theory train of thought and blame the government.
Of course, that was it. The murderer was sent out their by none other than Ashcroft himself. They brainswashed the poor young man, turned him into a killing machine and then sent him out to kill a young police officer, all to make the anti-war protesters look bad. Of course.

Look.
It’s clear that there are things in our American history to which, like the root causes of all tragedies, we can trace the causes of many things. But one of the great things about this country is the commitment to the ideal of Progress, that things can be identified and fixed, that tomorrow will be better than today, that we are not enslaved to our tragic roots, and can leave them behind.
It isn’t sudden or perfect. But it’s real.
And yet we seem be ass-deep in people who want to throw up their hands and burn the house down rather than fix the leaking roof. That’s a great plan. If you’re willing to sleep outside in the cold.
The house may be leaking and imperfect, but it does keep the worst of the elements outside.
UPDATE: I hate it when I do a bad job and I’m not clear. Michele’s post was ‘triff’, which is slang for ‘terriffic’. I got four emails and two comments asking me what the hell I meant…so apologies to Michele first of all, and to the readers whose time I wasted.
Blaming America is stupid. There are lots of things wrong with this country (and this world); this is where we have the best shot at fixing them.
There’s no place I’d rather be.

I don’t agree with this article in the Guardian UK (referred by Policy Library), but it raises questions that people like me (who oppose ‘command and control’ liberalism, but claim to still be liberals) have got to deal with.
Dammit, just what I need, having my face rubbed in my own contradictions…

…on TIA. I’ll make a longer response later (after I do some thinking), but here’s a quick one:
It seems reasonable to me that the government create plans and test tools to do things that are unlikely to be done, both as planning exercises and to have a stock of contingency plans. When I read about the outrage over the fact that the government has plans to, for example, invade the UK, I tend to cut them some slack because I think that planning for unlikely alternatives is a good thing.
But there are limits.
Planning for a roundup and incarceration of all Muslim-Americans would itself be an outrageous act, regardless of whether it was ever seriously considered as a policy. Making the plan itself crosses a bright line.
Does TIA hit that threshold?? I didn’t think so. A lot of people do. I’m weighing the issue, and will make more comments later.